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The Dylanologists by David Kinney: review

Unbeknownst to me, at least, there has been for decades a little known global cult dedicated to the worship of all things Bob Dylan and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Kinney takes us on a exploration of this fascinatingly creepy phenomenon in his new book, appropriately titled The Dylanologists, Adventures in The Land of Bob.

For those still wedded to an idée fixe of Bob Dylan as essentially a 1960s folk singer of such iconic ballads as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” wrap your minds around this simple fact: Dylan has had more career makeovers than Joan Rivers has had facelifts — and true-blue, died-in-the-wool dylanologists endlessly debate the existential meaning of Bob’s seemingly ceaseless creative morphing: from angry protest balladeer (1962), to lovesick troubadour (1964), to electrified rock ’n’ roller (1965-66), to sweet-voiced country singer in “Lay Lady Lay” (1969), to heartbroken anti-hero in Blood on the Tracks (1975), to Christian convert and gospel singer (1979-81), to lost soul (1981-91), to raunchy bluesman of Love and Theft (2001), to today’s pop culture elder statesman.

Dylanogists have lived through all these “transfigurations,” as Dylan, himself, might call them, and more often than not, it’s angered, annoyed and confused many of them. Just as they are “getting down” with a “new Bob Dylan,” he does yet another U-turn. In the late 1960s, Dylan, still perceived to be a classic folkie, famously played electric guitar at a rock concert in Manchester. An appalled fan yelled “Judas.” In the world of the dylanologists that was a truly seminal moment. But, if Kinney’s book is to be believed, there have been many such moments in the dance-of-death, love/hate pas-de-deux that is Dylan’s relationship with his fans.

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Kinney recalls how music writer Paul Williams once wondered what it would be like to be Dylan and carry around “the half-formed dreams of millions on your back?” “Dylan has always been afraid of his followers and Williams could understand why. ‘Their relationship with him is so intense, they expect so much and more than once they’ve turned really nasty when he chose to deliver something other than their notion of who Bob Dylan should be.’”

But frustration runs both ways. One of the book’s recurring themes is Dylan’s intense irritation with fans that perceive him to be a messiah, a guru, a shaman, a Jesus-figure who can resolve issues troubling their lives. In a Rolling Stone interview, Dylan complained, “Why is it when people talk about me they have to go crazy. . . They want to know what can’t be known, they’re seekers…It’s sad.”

But is Dylan being just a bit too coy? At one point Kinney seems to suggest the great man, himself, may be complicit in the “Bob As God” phenom. When his memoir Chronicles was published in 2004, Dylan “obsessives” scoured the manuscript, only to discover that much of the material had been “cribbed.” Among the pilfered sources, a book titled The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene, and more specifically a chapter called “How to Create a Cult in Five Easy Steps.” “It didn’t matter what he took from the chapter,” notes Kinney. “The hidden suggestion that he was reading it — and so closely — was too rich.”

So what wisdom might Dylan have “appropriated”? Take a gander at these “Greeneisms”: “In a rush to believe in something, people will manufacture saints and faith out of nothing. Do not let gullibility go to waste. Make yourself the object of worship. Make people form a cult around you.” Fascinating, but it remains highly speculative as to whether Dylan ever contemplated such a giant con — and he often warned his fans not to “conflate the man and the music. Shakespeare wasn’t Hamlet.”

Still, Dylan is clearly not without a sense of his own destiny. “Someone once told Dylan his lyrics were like The Bible because everything you needed to know was in there somewhere,” writes Kinney. “Well, Dylan replied, ‘That goes without saying.’” David Kinney’s book is chock-a-block with wild, wacky and wonderful characters — The Dylanologists — that believe so, as well. So, I guess Bob is God! Who knew?

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